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Brexit is a land of rainbows and unicorns but nobody is really buying it (Picture: Metro.co.uk)

There are 104 pages in the Brexit White Paper about the future of the UK’s relationship with the EU that offers supposed ‘cabinet unity’ that caused so many resignations.

The best thing about the White Paper is that it does offer a clear ‘pragmatic’ direction. The worst thing is that it’s a direction that not many agree with.

Yes, Brexit still means Brexit, there are still promises of silver bullets, moons on sticks and magical unicorns for all and Theresa May promises ‘a principled and practical Brexit that is in our national interest’.

No, it’s not a workable solution.

The reality is that Brexit means Britain will be poorer, less well-connected with big trading blocks, a less welcoming place for foreign people unless they’re wealthy or students and there is no real way of squaring Brexit with the UK population.

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Professor Patrick Minford CBE, chairman of Economists For Free Trade calls it ‘the worst Brexit for Britain’, Miles Celic, chief executive officer of TheCityUK, said it was ‘regrettable and frustrating’. Lorraine Johnston, regulatory counsel at law firm Ashurst, said it was the ‘UK’s attempt to become the tail that wags the dog’. Prominent Brexit MP Jacob Rees Mogg called it ‘a pale imitation of the paper prepared by David Davis [and] a bad deal for Britain’. Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith said he didn’t vote to ‘half-leave’.

Apart from aerospace and defense lobby group ADS noting that the White Paper was ‘a good step’ in the process (though warned that the clock was ticking), it is difficult to find anybody who thinks this proposal is a good one or has any realistic chance of success.

Remainers to the left of her, Brexiteers to the right, Theresa May is stuck in the middle with EU disapproval, with Dominic Raab and a proposal that talks all nice but doesn’t concede enough to make the EU agree to it nor, on the other side, offer enough change for the Brexiteers to be happy with it.

The White Paper talks about a deal requiring ‘pragmatism and compromise from both sides’ but that’s just simply not true. Pragmatism and compromise is at the very heart of the EU as it builds policy that can either be welcomed or tolerated by the soon-to-be 27 member states.

Pragmatism could be the EEA or a second referendum, though risky. Pragmatism would be accepting that the end of free movement (as it wanted by a majority of UK citizens) will mean the UK is less prosperous as it will signal an end to tariff-free trade.

True pragmatism would be to honestly explain the probabilities of what is likely to happen after Brexit, backed by leading economists, experts, politicians and business leaders.

The EU doesn’t need to be pragmatic here, the more the UK struggles, the more the EU prospers and rallies together.

Softening Brexit is a least worst option but is treacherous politics.

The government cannot admit, as Jenni Russell in the New York Times laid out, that all these promises of millions to the NHS and the end to fishing quotas and free movement without any tariffs were always complete rubbish and impossible to see in real life.

Theresa May says she has a united cabinet, what’s left of it (Picture: Joel Rouse/Downing Street)

The idea that the UK can not only have its cake and eat it but order more cake from anywhere in the world without any import duty is, at best, naïve or, at worst, malicious politicking gone horribly, horribly wrong.

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If a deal was possible to square with the electorate, David Davis, Boris Johnson and a couple of other minor ministers wouldn’t have resigned their positions.

Theresa May’s White Paper builds up Brexitland as this theme park of wonderful attractions where everybody wins, everything works efficiently and there are free rides that will never break down and offer a great time for all.

Then, I wrote that ‘whatever deal we’re left with, even if that is the dreaded “no deal”, Britain would be better off financially and socially in the EU’ and the embarrassing thing is, except for a few ministers resigning, I could write exactly the same piece now. Little has changed in nine months.

Voters who chose Brexit are increasingly frustrated that the ‘easy’ and ‘prosperous’ deal they were promised isn’t any closer than it was a year ago and actually pretty hard going.

The sad reality is that it is impossible politics. It is the single biggest reason why Theresa May is still prime minister: nobody else would want the job facing the task of making a less integrated, less attractive, less prosperous and less wealthy country more attractive to voters.

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Boris Johnson might be the Mickey Mouse of Brexitland but even he has called the deal ‘polishing a turd’. He doesn’t – nor has he ever had – an actual plan that made any logical or factual sense.

It’s this fantasy land of frictionless borders for products but not for services, there is a lot of friction-filled politics to follow.

While we finally have a direction to travel in, we’re still a long way from Brexitland being a destination that anyone sees as worth visiting.